


And you and you and you and you

by Teatrolley



Category: SKAM (Norway)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Established Relationship, Getting Together, In like a thousand different ways, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Multiple Universes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 19:04:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13301268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teatrolley/pseuds/Teatrolley
Summary: In some universes it goes like this:Or: When it comes down to it, it's always them





	And you and you and you and you

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [And you and you and you and you](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13914507) by [sunny_witch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunny_witch/pseuds/sunny_witch)



> yo i'm back and it's actually short this time, for the second time ever, go me
> 
> cw for mentions of suicidal thoughts. nothing at all graphic but take care of yourself regardless. other than that, enjoy!

In some universes it goes like this:

The door slams open as the sound comes in; Even’s room.

“So this is me,” Even says, or, “fuck,” or, “watch out,” or, a little breathlessly: “Isak.”

Sometimes the wall is a shelf filled with vinyl, sometimes with Even’s sketches, sometimes with a guitar, always with something to make movies with. 

When they get to the bed Isak sits astride Even’s lap, and Even pushes his shirt up, diving in to kiss his stomach as Isak pulls it the rest of the way off, and he’s been eyeing Even for months, or a week, or sometimes just for the evening, at the film club or the concert venue or the lecture hall or across the Nissen schoolyard. 

When he kisses Even, he holds onto his cheeks, and when Even kisses him back, he smiles, and it’s always like this, close and close and close and clothes off, the two of them giggling, even if they don’t know each other, because when you’re trying to be quick about it it’s often funny, too.

Even always kisses him like he’d die if he didn’t, like he’s been famished for months, open-mouthed open mouth on Isak’s cheeks and Isak’s neck and Isak’s chest and stomach and thighs and–

“Even,” Isak breathes, because he always remembers his name the moment it’s spoken, holding it in his palms like something he knows he’ll never forget about, even if it’s just one time, one time, one time, _do you want to do this again another time?_ “Even.”

“Mm?” Even asks, almost all of the time, and Isak throws his head back, arches into it a little, wants to be closer, rolls them around so they can be closer. “Yeah?”

“Mm,” Isak says, “slower,” or, “more,” or, “kiss me,” or, “there,” or, “give me your hand,” or, “let me. I’ll show you.”

After, there’s a giggle and a high-five and a wet flannel, maybe, or a shower, or sometimes, if they’re feeling fancy, a shower and then a bath, and–

“Stay.”

Always like that, even if it just means stay the night, _don’t leave now, it’s snowing, or the summer night has turned too cold, or cabs are expensive this time of night and the trains don’t run anymore, or I want you here, so…_

Stay.

Isak always does, of course, and then there’s the two of them, a bed, IKEA duvet covers, a teasing smile, a soft one, _which side do you prefer?_ and then: Even, breathing slowly, strand of hair falling into his eyes, mouth a little open, freckles facing the window where the moonlight comes in, hand curled loosely in on itself where it lies on Isak’s chest, like it belongs there, and Isak: realising, with varying levels of nerves, that he likes this. 

Likes _him_. 

In other universes they’re in uni, like:

He’s sitting in a lecture hall next to Sana, first semester, and he has to do chemistry, which he doesn’t hate but doesn’t like either in a way that leaves him mostly apathetic, and he did the reading, anyway, and took the notes, so he leans back and puts his laptop on his lap and plays a game of solitaire instead of listening.

Sana scolds him about it, then seems to realise that he’s right, it _is_ boring, and joins him instead, pointing out the cards that fit, silently, until they’ve won. Then there’s her, asking him to look something up on their Facebook course-page and Facebook, treacherously, revealing to her that the last name he searched for was Even’s.

In this universe Isak knows him through Sana, enough to know his full name but not enough that he can call him a friend, not even a Facebook one. Not that that stops him from studying his profile, like he’s studying for an exam.

He’s so _cool_ in this one, making status updates about the university film club where his and Mikael’s short films will be showed, and posting links to Spotify playlists that Isak knows he’s not the only one who listens to without even knowing him. Whenever Isak’s seen him around campus he’s been wearing an øya backpack, and if Isak ever actually got to be his friend he’d tease him about that just as much as he’d tease Jonas about it, _you really are tragically stereotypically hipster, huh_ , but for now he keeps it as another little thing that he likes about him.

Of course Isak isn’t interested just because he’s cool, wasn’t into Jonas just because he was cool, either, but because he’s kind, too, smiling in Isak’s direction every time they cross paths and he notices or throwing his head back when he laughs, gleefully, at something someone told him in one of the courtyards, loud enough for Isak to always bloody hear it.

Sana is the one who draws Isak’s laptop towards herself, clicks onto Even’s profile and, before Isak can say anything, presses _add friend_. At least most of the time. Other times Isak does it himself, and one time he doesn’t even have to, because Even does it first.

It doesn’t matter how it begins as much as it matters that it continues. That they talk and talk, 9am and 9pm and all the minutes in-between, _I like chatting with you,_ and, _hope your day’s been good,_ and, _I saw you on campus today but you were gone before I could say hi. You looked good, though, I like that snapback you wear,_ and, _would you maybe want to meet up sometime soon?_

It’s weird, meeting when they already know each other, and it happens in all sorts of different ways. A walk around campus, a coffee in a coffee-shop, a hug when they first see each other, like they’re old friends. 

One time Even takes him to a theatre, a movie that he’s already seen, and whispers to Isak about the cinematography and direction and metaphors, making the hairs on Isak’s neck right by his ears tingle, goosebumps and pleasure. 

One time Isak turns his head to the side and, in the middle of the darkened movie theatre, kisses him. 

“Are you shutting me up?” Even asks, when they pull apart, and even in the dark Isak can see that he’s grinning.

“No,” he says, and he’s grinning, too. “I don’t know why you’d take me kissing you because of something you were doing to mean that you should stop doing it.”

Even laughs, then, says, “we can watch it another time,” before he leans over and kisses Isak back. 

Other times they get further into uni and pick the same selective at the same time, eyeing each other from across the lecture hall until they start sitting next to each other until they don’t stop until they start using the fifteen minute break to talk, worming their ways into each other’s lives, figuring out each other’s interests, until there’s a science exhibit at the nearest museum and Even asks Isak to go.

One time their rented library lockers are next to each other, Isak’s filled haphazardly with books and Even's filled with tea and snacks and a charger and coins, and it’s there that they begin chatting until they start sitting next to each other in the study hall until Even starts keeping around snacks for Isak, too, until Isak fingers the cover of the book in his hands and says, “do you wanna…?” and Even says, “yes,” before he’s even finished the question.

“Brave,” Isak says, not hiding that he’s smiling, a lot. “You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”

“Rob a bank?” Even says, and he’s smiling, too. “I was sure you were going to ask me to rob a bank.”

“So you did know,” Isak says, and Even looks so _happy_ about it, tilting his head to the side with the softest expression on his face, and Isak’s heart already been leaping after him for a while, in this one, but if it hadn’t it would, now. “Never mind, then.”

The film club ones are good, too.

It’s always Jonas who drags them there, somehow, _it’s a part of uni culture, guys, we have to engage a little_ , and it’s always the rest of them who go with him, a little reluctantly but with fondness for him, too, and sometimes Mahdi, who changes between studying philosophy and studying maths, is actually excited about it.

It’s an every-first-Wednesday-of-the-month sort of thing, taking place in the evening, and there are about five short films screened every time. Sometimes Even is showing one of his own, the first time Isak’s there, and other times he’s simply hosting, but he’s always there, because he’s passionate about it enough to be passionate about promoting other people’s work, too.

There are beers available after, and you can talk to the artists. Sometimes all they do is get one of those, but other times Jonas makes them stay for a bit, and one of those times Isak takes a swig from his bottle, looks up, and finds Even watching him from across the room.

“I’ll go get another beer,” he says, and when Magnus points out that the one he’s holding is still half-full, he reaches out to pour it into the plant behind him, kind of hoping Even is looking, and sends a wink in Magnus’s direction when he gets up to leave. Then:

“Hi,” he says, at the bar. “Just a beer, please.” And then smiles when he’s met by the sound of a new voice.

“I haven’t seen you here before,” Even says, leaning against the bar like some sort of Greek God, and when Isak turns to face him, he gives Even a once-over first thing, meaning for Even to see it. “You new?”

“No,” Isak says. “I’m science.”

“Ah.” Even gives him a once-over, too. “I’ll pay for your drink.”

“Please.”

Isak knows what it means. _I’m courting you, now, because I want to take you home._ Then:

“Did you like it?” Even asks.

“What?” 

“The movie.”

“Which one?”

“Mine,” Even says, and he’s smirking like he’s teasing Isak, like he knows that Isak doesn’t know which one it was. “Did you like it?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Hm.” As Isak takes a swig of the beer, Even grins. “It was the one with the bathtub.”

“Oh.” Isak remembers that one. The chronicling of a relationship, from the rose-coloured, giggly beginning to the comfortable middle to the both apathetic and heart-breaking end, but he liked it because it didn’t end there. Because after the girlfriend left, the other girl stayed in it, touching the edge of the bathtub where their hands had met for the first time, and smiled. “I _did_ like that one.”

Even throws his head back when he laughs, large enough to fill the whole room and Isak’s entire chest, and he always does, but in this one Isak never stops thinking about it.

“You’re great,” he says, and he says it again later, when he’s kissing Isak up against the door to his flat, hand with the keys in it resting on Isak’s shoulder as the other one is pressed onto his cheek, like Even just couldn’t wait the seven seconds it’d take to open the door to kiss Isak again: 

“Isak,” he says, almost a whisper, breathing it onto his skin because their faces haven’t yet not been close. “You’re so great.”

Other times Isak is less brave and Even is less forward and it doesn’t work out quite so perfectly, so Isak has to show up to a couple of the clubs and stare and pine before any of them work up the nerve to approach each other, and sometimes they become friends first, taking the longer road to the kiss, but they always kiss in the end, and Isak always finds himself standing on campus grounds next to Even, handing out fliers to inform people of the next showing at the club. 

In entirely different universes, Isak doesn’t even like Even at first.

They’re rare, those ones, but they are there. Universes where it’s too soon or too late or something goes wrong, where Even almost outs Isak, on accident, by flirting with him, or where Isak’s trauma has already made him grow a little too cynical and a little too harsh, even though all he wants to be, what he really, really wants to be, is kind.

It’s never more than at first, though, and Isak’s always grateful for him, in these ones, once they’ve settled into each other and Isak’s been transformed in some sort of way he didn’t know he needed to be, but is glad to have been nonetheless. Into a better person, or a freer person, or a person who, finally, gives himself permission to love.

In some universes they meet when they’re young. 

He’s nine when they meet and fifteen when they kiss and Even’s family becomes his family; Even’s grandmother talks to him like he’s her grandson, too, and Even’s mum has known him so long she knows him better than his own dad does, or:

He’s twelve when they meet and twenty-one when they kiss and he has to live through the period of time where Even is actually, genuinely in love with Sonja, where it’s not just something that was good once but stopped being it a while ago but, instead, something he heads into with the bright-eyed enthusiasm of a young teenager discovering his first love. 

Even here he cherishes Isak, though, the same way he cherishes Mikael when it’s Isak he’s with; cherishes him in the sort of way that’s a natural conclusion to the experience of seeing someone through all of the most important aspects of their life. 

It’s still one of the times where Isak takes the theory, _multiple universes and all of them including us_ , and makes it something desperate, not _I think I’d always love you_ but _maybe somewhere out there you love me back._

In another universe they’ve been dating for barely a month when Even goes to study abroad for half a year and Isak stays in cold, horrible Oslo and then there’s a Christmas and a New Year’s Eve that Even meant to come home for but, suddenly, can’t.

It’s December 31st, two hours before the new year, when Even calls Isak and asks, quietly, if he should call at midnight, too, and Isak says no. Says, _I don’t mean that I don’t want to hear your voice, I just mean that it makes me so sad to talk to you when you’re not here because I miss you so much, and I just think maybe I should be with my friends instead._

A minute to midnight he calls Even anyway.

“We can’t kiss,” he says, as the countdown begins amongst the rest of the group that he’s standing apart from, but only standing apart from a little bit. “But I can tell you I love you instead. So, are you ready?”

“I’m ready,” Even says, after a moment that sounded like consideration, and Isak smiles.

“Five,” he says, into the phone, and then: “Four, three, two, one,” and when he says it, “I love you,” Even is saying it, too.

They laugh.

“I meant what I said before you left,” Isak goes on. “I don’t care if it’s not quite easy all of the time, because it’s not about never having any problems, it’s about wanting you so much I want to keep on trying to find you, and it’s about knowing that you’re the one I want to do that for.” And then: “With." A breath. "Want to do that with.”

Even always radiates life when he’s healthy, always looks like the sun when he’s having a good time. He’s kind and fun and fascinating and he somehow always loves movies just as Isak always loves biology, even though maybe things like that should be arbitrary and sometimes, when they meet, he’s having a really, really, really hard time.

He’s a gentle person, sometimes angry at the world and himself and the pain but not really prone to outbursts of it, the same way that Isak is, and when he’s sad it always looks like that: Sadness, deep in his bones; the lonely, exhausting, downtrodden kind that keeps him in bed or makes it hard for his smiles to reach his eyes or makes him sit on cold bathroom tiles, head in his palms, wanting to die.

Isak thinks he should be angrier, sometimes, when he knows him like this. Thinks about buying a box of cheap IKEA plates and making Even break them, instead of trying to break himself; thinks Even should break the plates that are already sitting inside of their kitchen cabinet and leave Isak to clean up the mess, if that’s what it’s going to take to calm the creature of pain inside of him, all-encompassing, that seems like it’s trying to burst him apart from the insides and leave him empty.

It only happens once, that Isak wakes up in their flat to an empty bed and finds Even sitting like that, in the bathroom, curled in on himself against the edge of their baththub, looking like he’d cry if he could, and has to listen to him say, “Isak. I need you to call my parents and get them to take me to the hospital, because I need to be watched over tonight, and I don’t want it to be by you.”

Isak always knows about pushing his feelings down and away for a little while longer while he does what needs to be done, and he does here, too, so he doesn’t cry. Not until Even is safely inside and he’s folding in on himself on the curb in front of the psychiatric unit, sitting just like Even did earlier, sobbing into his own palms, while Even’s mother sits besides him and cards her hands through his hair. 

Isak learns, then, how hard it is to love someone who life is so hard for; whose whole being is revolting against even being alive. And he learns what it’s like to be grateful.

Actually, he thinks maybe he knew nothing of gratefulness before this, because it’s never been as clear and all-encompassing to him as it is when he comes back to the ward the next day and the staff allows them, him and Even, to go for a walk around the hospital grounds, cold January air and intertwined hands, and Even says, “they took my razor so I hope you like scruff.”

Isak cry-laughs about it, and then he’s just crying, even though he said he wouldn’t, sobbing into Even’s shoulder as Even, even though he’s the one who’s sick, reaches out to pull him into his arms. 

“I suppose,” Even says, when he’s stopped crying and started breathing again, “that it’s a good thing that they make it so unbearably controlling in here that anyone would want to fight their way back up just to get out,” and then, as Isak pulls away to dry his noose on the sleeve of his sweater and to watch him: “Isak. I really, really want to go home.”

Like he said: Grateful.

Most of the time, though, it doesn’t have to be that hard.

Another time, then, they’re in a hospital for an entirely different reason, and it’s where they meet. Isak is doing his placement there, and Even is bringing Mikael in with a broken leg, and Isak doesn’t find himself interested in him because he’s hot or mysterious or fascinating, this time, but because he’s a kind, good friend; the very thing that he always ends up loving him for.

It starts because Isak is assigned to Mikael’s room, and because when Isak goes to check up on him he watches Even sit in a chair beside his head, making the kind of conversation that’s making Mikael laugh and offering Mikael his hand to squeeze, or his knee, when Mikael hisses in pain. 

It continues because the rest of their friends arrive before it’s time for Mikael to get the cast on, and because Even, when Isak, having gotten it wrong the first time around, tells them only his partner can come along, plays along.

After, then, Even comes up to him in the hallway and says, “I hope there’ll be no consequences to me saying this now, but Mikael is not actually my boyfriend. We just played along because we weren’t sure you’d let me come otherwise, and I didn’t want him to be alone.”

“Oh?” Isak says, and he’s smiling because Even is smiling, the kind that looks like it’s given easily but like it’s given, too, with intention behind it; like he just wants Isak to have something nice.

“Mm,” he confirms, the smile staying on his face, and then: “I do like boys, though.”

Isak chuckles, earnestly, and blushes, embarrassingly, and Even tilts his head like he’s never been this fond.

“Well,” Isak says, clearing his throat when it comes out hoarse, and willing himself to gather enough courage to meet Even’s eyes because in this one, apparently, Even is really good at making him shy. “Me, too.”

Even laughs. And then he hands Isak his phone, so Isak puts his number in it, and when Even turns it around later to make him double-check it, he’s written in the name as _cute future doctor who blushes pretty_. So Isak blushes again.

Sometimes, then, when they meet, they do it at Nissen.

There are lots of versions with little varieties, but then there’s this: The one where they talk about yellow curtains but don’t have them. The one where Even arrives just in time, exactly when Isak needs him and is ready, too, and where Isak does the same. The one where they end up lying together like this: In their shared flat, in their shared bed, in each other’s arms. January snow falling outside.

It's cinematic, Even would say. It's where the shot finally settles.

“Hey,” he says, now. Makes Isak look up from where he was using a fingertip to draw the lines between his freckles; makes Isak’s whole being return his attention to him, watching it as they both melt into the kind of softness they only share with each other. “Hey.”

“Hi,” Isak says. 

“Hi.” And then: “How many Isaks and Evens are lying like this right now? Together, in each other’s arms?”

“Infinite,” Isak says, smiling as he touches Even’s cheek, and then: “In infinite time.”

**Author's Note:**

> multiverse theory, huh? 
> 
> comments and thoughts and all of that are, as always, greatly appreciated
> 
> also what are we listening to today, you ask? since we're hoping for a timmy win at the golden globes we're listening to sufjan, our main good dude


End file.
